Newer residents of rural, urban-fringe communities are often assumed to have preferences for the development and conservation of rural lands that differ from those of longer-term residents. The existing literature offers little to verify or quantify presumed preference shifts. This paper provides a systematic, quantitative examination of whether stated preferences for development and conservation tradeoffs differ according to length of residency in a rural community, and explores implications of these findings for assumptions regarding development and conservation preferences.

Non-risk factors primarily determine the probability of paying positive premiums to landowners for bearing greater risk under crop share versus cash leasing arrangements. The trends toward higher cash rent levels on larger farms may indicate that higher cash rent is a bidding strategy to control additional leased acreage and perhaps to avoid management sharing with multiple landlords. Expansion of farm size may be more important than soil productivity in negotiating higher cash rents, due to potential size economies and under utilized machinery investments.

This paper measures the potential of land to generate income and establishes the contexts under which access to land can reduce poverty. Using Mexican household data, we apply nonparametric regression methods to estimate and graphically explore the relationship between land and welfare. Results suggest that the marginal value of land depends on both the complementary and contextual assets of the poor.

Can Delaware's agriculture coexist (and prosper) in the face of competing land uses over the next twenty years? We believe that maintaining Delaware's agriculture as a viable land-use alternative depends on the success in addressing three critical challenges. First, will residential, commercial, and industrial land uses be forced to bear the full costs that their land-use decisions visit on Delaware agriculture? Alternatively, will agriculture be fully compensated for its contribution to Delaware's economy and quality of life?

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), enacted in 1985, provides conservation benefits and agricultural supply control through voluntary, long-term retirement of crop land. Large-scale, long-term land retirement programs produce, in varying degrees, negative effects on those businesses and economic sectors that provide agricultural inputs and services. While the effects of the CRP on agriculture are well understood, economic assessments of the market-value of conservation benefits from the program accruing to rural economies remains largely undocumented.

Land values calculated with the current North Dakota agricultural land valuation model were compared with values calculated by capitalizing the average cash rent for each county. Results showed there was a significant difference in cropland values, but there was no significant difference in non-cropland values. Land values for the 2000, 2001, and 2002 assessments were compared.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), first enacted in 1985, seeks to achieve both conservation and agricultural supply control objectives through voluntary, long-term (10 year contracts) retirement of cropland. By fall 2000, the program had enrolled about 31.4 million acres nationwide, and North Dakota ranked third among the states, with 3.2 million contracted acres, or 11 percent of the state's total cropland.

A new land law went into effect in January 1998 in Mozambique. The impetus behind these actions was the belief that a new legal and regulatory framework was necessary to reduce the frequency of land conflicts between largeholders and smallholders while simultaneously promoting much-needed investment in the agricultural sector. With empirical evidence presented in this report, based on smallholder survey data collected from 1994 to 1996, we challenge widely held beliefs about land tenure and access in the smallholder sector in Mozambique.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), enacted in 1985, provides conservation benefits and agricultural supply control through voluntary, long-term retirement of crop land. Large-scale, long-term land retirement programs produce, in varying degrees, negative effects on those businesses and economic sectors that provide agricultural inputs and services. While the effects of the CRP on agriculture are well understood, economic assessments of the market-value of conservation benefits from the program accruing to rural economies remains largely undocumented.

The role of agri-environmental programs has taken on increased importance in the current Farm Bill debate with an eighty percent increase in Title II funding. However, little empirical evidence exists on the tradeoffs between economic costs and environmental benefits of new agri-environmental programs to assist policymakers in their designs. This paper illustrates some of the budgetary and environmental issues inherent in these initiatives. Several policy options are explored using an environmental simulation model and an economic spatial-equilibrium model for U.S. agriculture.

Can remotely sensed imagery improve hedonic land price models? A remotely sensed variable was added to a hedonic farmland value model as a proxy for land productivity. Land cover data were used to obtain urban and recreational effects as well. The urban and recreational effects were statistically significant but economically small. The remotely sensed productivity variable was statistically significant and economically large, indicating that knowing the "greenness" of the land increased the explanatory power of the hedonic price model.